


bioluminescence

by misura



Category: Deeplight - Frances Hardinge
Genre: Captivity, Crueltide, Gaslighting, Manipulative Relationship, Not Safe Sane and Consensual, Other, Post-Canon, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:55:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27917827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: "Jelt?" Even as he said it, Hark knew that it couldn't be true. Jelt was dead.'Not dead.'Jelt - and itwasJelt, no matter how impossible that seemed - giggled.'Just changed.'
Relationships: Hark/Jelt (Deeplight)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 7
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	bioluminescence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).



Hark couldn't believe he was going to die getting thrown overboard a ship to feed a god that didn't even exist. _A sacrifice,_ the captain had called it, and Hark had known then that his kidnappers were members of the League - or ex-members, given that officially, the League no longer existed.

Unfortunately, not having a hungry god waiting for him in the depths did not mean Hark would be able to swim with his hand and feet tied. He'd done his best to wriggle loose, to maybe get his hands on something sharp to cut his bonds, but the ex-Leaguers had been vigilant.

 _Paranoid,_ Hark thought, maybe with a dash of guilt mixed in. Even if they hadn't been there when the Jelt thing had killed their comrades, they must have heard the story. Hark had told it often enough, and even heard it tell by other people.

He'd sat down with a drink, listening, and felt at once strange and wonderful, to hear someone else tell the story that he, Hark, had made up. Based on things that had actually happened, of course, but still.

The story-teller had put her own spin on a couple of things, only Hark hadn't minded. He knew that was how stories worked. You couldn't keep them the same forever. They kept changing.

Unfortunately, reality was a little less flexible, and Hark's story seemed to be coming to an early ending. Hark supposed you could argue that he'd probably never again do anything as important and impressive as stop another god from rising from the Undersea. Still, _And then he just disappeared and was never heard of again_ might make for a good ending, suggestive that the hero might one day return, but Hark knew that personally, he'd rather have the story of his life end with something like, _And then he spent the rest of his life in comfort and happiness and lived to be a hundred_.

Hark wasn't going to live to be a hundred. He wasn't even going to make it to twenty-five.

To the rest of the world, to Dr Vyne and Selphin and the governor and everyone else, Hark would simply disappear. They might miss him, and they might look for him, and they might even track down some of the men and women aboard this ship and hear from them what had happened, but Hark would be long dead by then.

Hark wished the ex-Leaguers hadn't gagged him. He might have at least tried to talk them out of it, maybe convince them that he wasn't any good as a sacrifice, that the god their friends had tried to raise had been Hark's best friend, and would be very angry with them if they harmed Hark.

Instead, all he could do was lie there and wait, hoping for a chance. Hark thought he might have prayed, except that the gods he'd grown up with had turned out not to be gods at all, and they'd all died before he was even born anyway.

The water was very cold. If it hadn't been for the gag, Hark thought he might have screamed.

As it was, he just sank. He tried to tell himself that maybe that was for the best. Make it quick. Accept the inevitable. Close his eyes and accept that this was where it all ended.

_'Hark. Wake up.'_

Hark opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, in what looked like a cave. He heard waves crashing somewhere nearby, and he smelled rotting fish.

"Jelt?" Even as he said it, Hark knew that it couldn't be true. Jelt was dead.

 _'Not dead.'_ Jelt - and it _was_ Jelt, no matter how impossible that seemed - giggled. _'Just changed.'_

Hark felt very cold. He was still wearing the same clothes as when he'd been kidnapped. They were soaked through and through, heavy with seawater.

Maybe, he reasoned, he'd managed to cut his bonds with something he'd found in the sea. That could have happened. He wouldn't have known where to go next, but somehow, he'd managed to find his way here and dragged himself ashore, and now he was hallucinating. That made sense.

 _'See, Hark? You need me. You've always needed me,'_ Jelt said, giggling again, as if this was all very funny. _'As I needed you. You know that, don't you?'_

"I never needed you," Hark whispered, even though he knew that wasn't true.

 _'Liar!'_ Something whistled through the air. Hark felt the skin on his left arm burn and as he looked at it, he saw red. Blood.

He told himself, _Maybe I cut myself on whatever I used to cut my bonds,_ and then that he almost believed it, but he knew neither of those things were true. He hadn't cut himself. He didn't believe he'd cut himself.

 _'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you,'_ Jelt said, and he sounded like he meant it, like the Jelt Hark had known for years and years, the Jelt who'd always been there for Hark when Hark had really needed him - even if Jelt also hadn't been there plenty of times, when Hark had only really, really wanted him to be. _'You made me do it, Hark. You know I have a temper.'_

Hark did know. He swallowed. Either Jelt was real, or he wasn't. If he was, Hark was in trouble. If he wasn't, Hark was just lying by himself in a cave, feverish and delirious, without food or drinkable water or anyone to come and rescue him. He said, "I know, Jelt. I'm sorry. You're right. It was my fault."

_'Yes. Your fault. You're such a fool, Hark. You always were.'_

Hark nodded. "I need you to tell me what to do, Jelt. To keep me safe." He wondered if Jelt would even remember what humans needed. It would be sort of funny, Hark reflected, if Jelt had saved him from drowning only for Hark to die of exposure, or hunger, or thirst, or a fever.

 _'I'll keep you safe, Hark,'_ Jelt said. He sounded warm, almost friendly. _'Get some rest.'_

When Hark opened his eyes again, he felt deliciously warm. Jelt (and at this point, Hark supposed he had no choice except to accept that Jelt was indeed real) had gotten him blankets and there was even a fire, and food, and a barrel of drinking water.

Hark realized that he would have to plan his escape very, very carefully. It would not be at all easy to get away from Jelt, if Jelt could still do things like make a fire and move on land.

 _'You're awake,'_ Jelt said, and Hark looked around for a while, before spotting something in the water. _'You always were a sleepyhead, more fond of sleeping in and lazing about than working.'_

This wasn't true, but Hark let it go. He realized that he'd have to be doing a lot of that, these coming days. Letting things go. Agreeing when he disagreed. Pretending. Making up stories. Lying.

Jelt had always been good at spotting it when Hark lied, but Hark hoped that maybe, with Jelt in the water and Hark on the land, he'd be able to fool Jelt into believing him.

"I feel a lot better," he said, which was true. His left arm looked almost completely healed already, and for a moment, Hark felt his chest go tight. "Thank you." Did Jelt plan to change him? Had the process already begun? Was Hark going to wake up one day and realize that he was turning into something just like Jelt?

 _'I healed you,'_ Jelt said, confirming Hark's worst fears. _'I can do things like that now.'_

Hark swallowed. He promised himself that if it came to it, he'd find a way to kill himself. "How?"

The same whistling sound as before, except this time, Hark didn't get hurt. He realized Jelt was waving some sort of tentacle. It had a stinger on top.

 _'I can use it to hunt, too,'_ Jelt said proudly. _'To paralyze things I want to eat.'_

Hark felt a little sick. He imagined - _no,_ he told himself. _This is Jelt. You're smarter than Jelt. You've always been smarter than Jelt._ That thought felt disloyal, so he amended it to, _You can outsmart Jelt when you have to,_ which might not be true, but at least it didn't make him feel like a bad friend. "That's uh - I'm very impressed."

 _'My new body is amazing, much better than that old one those people from the League wanted me to have,'_ Jelt said, and then, sounding sly and shy at the same time, _'Would you like to see?'_

Hark knew Jelt wanted him to say 'yes'. He almost tasted Jelt's desire, Jelt's need for Hark to see him and tell him how amazing Jelt was. It was almost a relief. _I can do this,_ Hark told himself, and this time, he believed it. "If - if you want to show me," he said. "Of course, Jelt."

Quest had warned him, Hark realized. Not wittingly, perhaps, not deliberately, but Quest had told him what it was like, to look at something your mind could only barely comprehend, something monstrous and awful and horrible and terrifying and beautiful, and to have that something know your name, give you the impression that you had a place in its existence - maybe even in its heart.

That while it might view other people, lesser people as nothing more than flotsam, prey, food, _you_ were the exception. _You_ were special. _You_ were chosen.

Jelt had been his friend. Hark knew that Jelt could have chosen someone else to be his friend, but Jelt had chosen Hark, and most of the time, Hark had felt glad about that.

 _'I'm so happy I found you,'_ Jelt said. He'd gone back into the water. Hark told himself he liked that better, that he didn't want to look at Jelt again. (And again, and again, and again.)

"I thought - " Hark shivered. "I thought maybe you'd followed me." He did not want to tell Jelt the even uglier thing he'd thought, that maybe Jelt had influenced the ex-Leaguers somehow, instructed them to kidnap Hark and throw him overboard so that Jelt could find and 'rescue' him. "I dreamt of you sometimes," he added, wanting to explain. "Or I'd go swimming, and I'd see - "

 _'Being a god means having a lot of responsibilities,'_ Jelt said.

"Yes," Hark whispered. "I understand." If Jelt were to leave - that would be a good chance for Hark to escape. He'd just have to make sure Jelt wouldn't come back until he was gone.

Of course, Jelt might track him down again. Maybe not right away, but eventually. Hark might need to leave the Myriad altogether, move to the mainland. Never go swimming again.

Never see Jelt again. Just look at ordinary things, trees, and people, and flowers: things that were pretty, even beautiful, but not horrible or terrible. Not _frecht_

 _'You're special to me,'_ Jelt said. _'You know that, don't you? My Hark. No one will ever mean to me what you mean to me. No one will ever be able to betray me the way you betrayed me.'_

"I'm sorry." Hark realized he was crying. "I'm so sorry, Jelt. I didn't know - "

 _'Hush,'_ Jelt said. _'I know you're sorry, Hark. I forgive you. See? Am I not nice? Am I not kind? You stabbed me in the back, and I saved your life.'_

Part of Hark agreed with Jelt. Part of Hark felt Jelt should have let him die. Part of Jelt wanted to spend the rest of his life doing penance for what he had done.

And part of Hark stood apart from all these other parts and thought he was in much deeper trouble than he'd ever been able to imagine.

Hark did not ask where Jelt got the food or the soap or the clothes or any of the other things that seemed to magically appear in the cave while he slept. If he sometimes saw scratches on a chest, or splatters of something that looked like dried blood on a piece of cloth, Hark ignored it.

Without Jelt there, it was easier to think of things like escape. With Jelt there, it was hard to imagine making choices that would mean never seeing Jelt again, other than in his dreams.

Quest had killed the Hidden Lady. Hark would consider himself lucky if he merely got away.

Once he'd escaped, he'd have to tell people, of course. Jelt would be hunted and eventually killed, but Hark would have nothing to do with that. He'd done his part. Time for other people to be the heroes, to become the stuff of stories.

_'Hark. I'm back. Did you miss me?'_

"Yes, Jelt," Hark said. He didn't need to lie anymore; he only needed to put the part of him that meant it when he said things like that in control for a while. "You know I did."

 _'I still like to hear you say it. I have no one else, you know. Only you.'_ Jelt sounded sad, lonely.

Hark wondered who would be there for Jelt to talk to after Hark was dead. "I'm sorry."

 _'Poor, useless Hark,'_ Jelt said. _'You want to make me feel better, don't you?'_

Hark's mouth felt very dry. He said, "Yes. Of course, Jelt. Anything you want me to do, I'll do it."

The dark shape under the water that was Jelt got a little bigger. Hark waited, but Jelt didn't rise any further, as if he wasn't quite sure of what to do yet.

 _'Anything?'_ Jelt asked.

Hark could not imagine what Jelt could possibly want from him, but he knew that tone. He knew what Jelt wanted to hear. "Anything. All you need to do is ask."

 _'Ask?'_ Jelt hissed. Hark stared down at his right arm and saw a mark there, like something had stung him. _'Ask? Gods don't ask for things! They take them. As is right, because why should they ask for things that are already theirs?'_

"I'm s- " Hark felt chilled to the bone. He thought it was fear, shame, guilt, until he remembered Jelt telling him about his new body, the amazing body Hark had seen with his own eyes.

He wondered if Jelt was going to kill him. He probably deserved it. Jelt was right: Hark had always been stupid and clumsy and ungrateful for everything Jelt had given him.

Hark had never deserved a friend like Jelt. He hadn't deserved Jelt rescuing him.

 _Please,_ he thought. _I want to make this right. I want to -_

 _'Mine,'_ Jelt said. _'You were always mine, Hark. From the first time we met. You were just too foolish to know it, to accept it. We could have been so happy together.'_

Hark knew that this was true. He'd seen other people do it - not everyone, but that was just the way of the world. Some people made it, and some people fell behind. Jelt had always been destined to be one of the ones that made it.

 _'Look at you now,'_ Jelt said. Hark heard the water splash. He wanted to turn his head, to look at Jelt. To die looking at the most terrible, most beautiful person in the world. _'So weak. So helpless.'_

Hark felt Jelt touching him. It should have felt icky, like getting covered in dead fish, slimy and smelly and cold, and yet it was wonderful and frightening, like the sort of _frecht_ you felt instead of saw. Even Quest had never felt this, Hark knew, had never gotten this close to his Lady.

If he had, Quest would have never been able to kill her. He'd have spent the rest of his life reliving that moment, trying to find a way to make it happen again.

 _'So soft and pretty and small,'_ Jelt said, and Hark felt something hot and salty drip on his face.

He would have moved, tried to make it easier for Jelt to do whatever Jelt was trying to do, but Hark's body still wasn't listening to him, so all he could do was lie there and hope Jelt wouldn't mind, that it would be enough for Jelt that Hark was still there in spirit.

Jelt was stripping off his clothes, he realized, and Hark marvelled in the sensation of feeling Jelt all over him, the sensation of Jelt's clammy, inhuman skin against his own, the way Hark's entire world had shrunk to Jelt's smell filling his nose, Jelt's body holding him down, Jelt's voice in his head, not saying anything in human words, just mumbling, muttering.

Jelt had nudged his legs apart a bit, so he could wrap a tentacle around Hark's cock, and Hark wanted to tell Jelt that he didn't need to, that simply having Jelt close to him already felt better than anything had ever felt before. He couldn't seem to be able to shape the words though, the only sound coming out of his mouth a low moaning.

 _'Slut. This is what you've always wanted, isn't it?'_ Jelt said. _'All those times you made me hit you and yell at you; all those times you let me down and disappointed me, it was just because you wanted a good fuck. I mean, look at you.'_

Hark had never thought of it before, but now that Jelt had said it, he knew that it was true. He'd always wanted more of Jelt than Jelt had given him. He'd always pushed and pushed at Jelt until Jelt had hit back - and then Hark had come back anyway. He'd never been able to let go, to accept Jelt's boundaries, or Jelt's rejection.

 _'Say it,'_ Jelt said. _'Admit it, Hark. This is what you want, isn't it?'_

Hark thought, _yes, you're right, Jelt, you were always right,_ but his throat and mouth still weren't working properly, and all that came out was more moaning. He felt ashamed of himself. Jelt had been so patient, so kind, and yet Hark seemed doomed to keep disappointing him, even in such a small thing as saying a single, simple word. It was embarrassing.

Jelt giggled, one of his tentacles stroking Hark's face. Hark felt the stinger at the tip of it touch his lips. He imagined Jelt slipping it inside, perhaps as deep as Hark's throat. It would be painful and uncomfortable and terrifying, and Hark wanted it, wanted to prove to Jelt that Hark did deserve him.

Jelt didn't give him the chance.

 _'You want it to hurt, don't you?'_ Jelt said. _'You want to bleed for me, scream for me. You want me to rip you open and feast on your pain, your fear.'_

Hark tried to nod. One of Jelt's tentacles was between his legs, wriggling its way inside of him. It hurt only a little bit, hardly at all, but Hark could imagine it getting bigger and hurting more.

 _'But then, who would I talk to? Who would love me?'_ Jelt asked. _'See? You're always so selfish, Hark. You never cared about me the way I care about you. But that's all right. I'll let you make it up to me. Little by little, day by day.'_

Hark thought, _Thank you,_ knowing Jelt wouldn't be able to hear him.

_'Hark. Dear, lovely, pretty Hark. All mine at last.'_

Hark moaned.

 _'Oh, all right. Maybe I'll make you scream just a little bit,'_ Jelt said. _'But only because I never could refuse you anything when you're looking at me like that.'_


End file.
